hell yeah, a messaging app won't save the human race. If Elon is successful in his endeavor, we won't have to worry about a single planet-event wiping out the human race.
The differences between what SpaceX does today and a self sufficient permanent colony on Mars are far far greater than the difference between what SpaceX does today and and the fireworks I shot off last weekend.
Spacex is definitely not limited to satellites, they are planning to launch people in space and are currently delivering cargo to the space station.
There are plenty of information, some by Spacex, that show how their technology could be used for a permanent settlement on mars.
Their goal:
SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.
s/is building/has built
> Nowhere in that endeavor is the technology to permanently move a sufficient number of people to some other planet.
Nowhere in 1999 Google was the technology to autonomously drive cars, either. Yet, Google's cofounders explained their vision in 1999 to collect and organize the world's information. Vision and leadership is an important part of predicting a company's future, and Elon is very clear about this: The purpose of SpaceX is Mars colonization.
Until we see rocket fuel doubling in energy every eighteen months, any idea of a Mars mission (let alone colony) paid for with private money is wishful thinking.
Have you heard of the phrase "once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere" (Robert Heinlein)?
The delta-v from LEO to mars is only ~4.6 km/s assuming you aerobrake once you're in orbit. Or 3.8 if you're doing aerocapture.
For comparison, it costs ~10 km/s just to get into LEO.
Remember the tyranny of the rocket equation. Saving the rocket fuel required to get into orbit drops the total fuel cost by an absurd proportion.
We already have the tech for being able to do at least an order-of-magnitude drop in price to orbit, if not more. Launch loop, etc. (With a launch loop you need ~120m/s additional to get into LEO, but that's peanuts comparatively.) The biggest issue currently is that it's a lot of money to potentially build. And the political components.
Yeah, it'd be a huge chunk of change to build. But it's potentially worth it.
As crackpot ideas go, the launch loop (or variants thereof), is the one that I am (still) most excited for.
Realistically, the only hope we have of seeing astronauts on Mars is if China and the US (or some other pair of countries) gets in a Cold War-style pissing contest.
Looks like we need at least 3 orders of magnitude of improvement before we can even start to think about it. If SpaceX's program for reusable rockets succeeds beyond Musk's wildest dreams, we might get like 1 order of magnitude of cost reduction. There's still a hell of a long way to go, and that's if everything works perfectly.
A semi-permanent colony might be doable, but anyone there wouldn't last long without regular resupply from Earth.